Bodily contact between us was kept at a minimum, something which was unusual for us, as we were always snuggling up or at least holding hands. We were always connected in some way, but that afternoon we sat apart – Robert with his body facing mine (looking eager to lessen the distance between us in his remorseful way), me sat rigid, with my legs curled up, facing the telly straight on. It pains me to say it, but I basically ignored him as much as I could.
I told myself that once Robert had left for Nottingham I’d have time to think things through properly, maybe even talk to Pearl. I knew she was hard to shock, able to keep a secret and good with her advice. If I wanted to talk to any of the girls about it, she’d be the best to go to, definitely – especially as she wouldn’t judge me or get all self-righteous. She was far from a saint herself – something Robert was right about.
I also wanted to talk to Ben, see what he was thinking or feeling. Up until that point, in the twelve years Robert and Ben had been in my life, not a single major decision had been made before talking to one or both of them. Now that it was all on my own head, I felt bewildered and panicked.
‘These are awesome,’ Robert encouraged as he attempted to start up yet another meaningless conversation after coming back from the kitchen with yet another tea round. He was looking up at my latest photographs that I’d hung on the walls.
They were portraits of a whole mixture of people (students, teachers, shopkeepers, children, etc.), anyone I could rope into having their faces painted with an array of wild animals and walk through town – there was even a priest with a tiger guise, a shot I was particularly proud of. All of them were rather striking and meant to encapsulate the wild side in all humans that we keep hidden, the idea being that the animalistic side of us is still there somewhere deep inside – we’ve just learned to conform to what is socially acceptable.
Ben was one of my volunteers and I’d asked him to be a deer – it had been my one and only time to turn him into the Bambi I’d always thought of him as with his big brown eyes. As Robert pointed out the portraits and scanned the different faces, Ben’s face seemed to be bigger than anyone else’s. It grabbed my attention and made me feel paranoid as it looked back at me, teasing me as if the picture was about to tell Robert the truth. I knew it was my mind playing tricks on me, that all the portraits were identical in size, but that didn’t stop it from freaking me out with its torment. It made me feel itchy.
‘They’re really great,’ he nodded with forced enthusiasm.
‘Cheers …’ I mumbled.
I watched him in my peripheral vision, biting his lip and running his fingers through his hair and knew he was desperately searching for something else to say. Some new reason to talk and engage me in any way that wasn’t instantly crushed by the sense of foreboding that we were clearly drowning in. It wasn’t that he was deluded to hope for things to go back to normal instantly, more that the reality of the whole thing was too depressing for him to dwell on. He was a doer – put a problem in front of Rob and he tried his best to fix it. It was no doubt infuriating for him to be in a situation (one formed from his own doing) that couldn’t be sorted so easily. Even by Rob.
‘Do you want to go somewhere? Do something?’ he endeavoured, turning to me, clearly finding the day as agonizingly painful as I was. ‘We could call Ben. See if he wants to do something.’
He looked back up to the picture on the wall. He had seen it. To some extent I was right, that glossy little print had screwed me over, but in reality I knew he was suggesting it in the hope of digging us out of the awkward hole we’d painfully dug ourselves into. He was suggesting anything he could think of in the hope that something would work to erase the unpleasant feeling in the room. Little did he know he was making it worse.
‘I’m sure he mentioned some work he has due in for Monday …’ I lied.
‘We could still ask. Knowing him, he’s already done it anyway.’
‘You know what, I’m happy here,’ I shrugged, snuggling back into my pillows.
‘It’s a sunny day, Maddy, a bit of air would probably do us good,’ he said, reaching for his phone.
‘We don’t have to ask Ben along, though.’
It was an odd thing for me to say to Robert, and I knew it. I’d never had a problem with asking Ben to join us before. In fact, it was usually me encouraging Robert to invite him. The comment didn’t go unnoticed; Robert became shame-faced once more. His upbeat pretence dropped.
‘Is everything okay? Is he mad at me?’